‘Talk about a long wait!’ Marvel’s most acclaimed and most controversial TV series gets slapped with a debilitating delay by Disney Plus

Marvel’s Disney Plus offerings this year have proven that quality really is better than quantity. Although we’ve only had the three MCU streaming series released so far in 2024, they have all had their merits. Echo might have been somewhat niche, but it ably paved the way for next year’s Daredevil: Born Again. Agatha All Along, meanwhile, had a shaky start, but is now comfortably certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. And then there’s X-Men ’97.

The very first mutant-centric project from Marvel Studios — beating Deadpool & Wolverine by a hair — the X-Men: The Animated Series sequel was widely viewed as one of the most intelligent, multifaceted, and overall authentic projects Marvel has ever made. No wonder it is flying as high as Ororo Munroe on RT, with a near-perfect 99% critics score. That makes it the highest-rated of any MCU show, live-action or animated. So it’s tragic that we might have to wait an age for more.

The MCU’s highest-rated series on Rotten Tomatoes might take its sweet time in releasing its second season

Word on the street has it that X-Men ’97 season 2 won’t be with us until 2026. According to the latest reports, Marvel’s original plan to drop it during winter 2025 — which has previously been widely rumored — has been abandoned due to the studio’s intentions to make changes to the story and scripts. For anyone keeping up with all the behind-the-scenes X-Men ’97 drama, this may be disappointing, but it won’t come as much of a surprise.

Just a week prior to the first season’s premiere in May, showrunner Beau DeMayo was fired by Marvel, and in the months since the ex-EP has hit back at the studio in a big way, accusing producers of fostering a “toxic environment” and even alleging that he “no longer felt safe at the studio as a gay Black man.” On the other hand, Marvel has stated that an internal investigation found DeMayo was guilty of “egregious” misconduct, including sending unsolicited NSFW pictures to colleagues.

One thing both parties seem to agree on is that DeMayo will no longer have a credit on season 2, despite already completing work on it before he was fired. If this new update is accurate, it seems DeMayo’s work is being junked, with replacement showrunner Matthew Chauncey and his team likely coming up with their own ideas. DeMayo has already claimed that his plans to introduce popular X-Men villain Onslaught have been canned.

Unsurprisingly, fans don’t love the idea of having to be superhumanly patient for more X-Men ’97 goodness. “Talk about a long wait!” one X user replied. “Will I be alive by then?” another quipped (we hope). Others got on their anti-streaming soap boxes once again: “The normalisation of tv series taking 2-3 years to release 8 episode seasons is the worst thing to happen.” A counterpoint, though. Guys, we waited almost 30 years for a follow-up to X-Men TAS, I think we can survive, say, another a year and a half.